Welcome to Our Place School

Our Place School is a small Independent Special School, approved to educate children with Special Educational Needs and Difficulties (SEND), aged 8 years up to the age of 19 years. The children are genuinely at the heart of all we do, and each individuals needs are carefully built into a tailored curriculum to ensure they meet their aims and aspirations whilst feeling safe and valued within the school community.

All of our students have an Education Health Care Plan (EHCP) and most have had difficult education journeys before joining us. We aim to prepare students for adulthood, building confidence and independence alongside academic success, building their self-esteem and providing new opportunities along the way.

Our school is set in extensive grounds, formally an orchard, which provides for all manner of outdoor activities, including play equipment, all weather paths, forest school and vegetable and fruit patches.

School Vision & Mission

At Our Place School we believe that a young person who feels safe and secure is a successful one. We are committed to providing our young people with a place to grow and develop positively, where their individual needs are met, and they are seen and valued as the unique and wonderful young people they are.

As young people grow in a positive and stimulating environment, they feel secure in advocating for themselves. Young people can then build the capacity to learn new things and become confident to act mutually. When they are secure in their learning they can understand what they require and what is required from them.

Our Place School strives to provide a holistic, progressive, individually bespoke and creative care and curriculum plan, which has our young people’s wellbeing (as defined by Section 10(2) of the Children Act, 2004) at the centre of all we do.
We believe that education should take place in a fully inclusive environment with equal opportunities for all and that young people should learn to value religious and cultural differences.
We believe that the care young people receive should be person-centred, so that they are safe secure and happy to enable young people to achieve.

Opportunity

Potential

Safety

Teaching & Learning

At Our Place School, we are proud of the fact that we aim to shape what we do according to the individual pupils on roll. As such, we are flexible in how we devise and deliver the curriculum we offer and will continue to adapt and refine it as the need arises. We aim for our curriculum to be inclusive for all our pupils needs.

Using our assessment and knowledge of pupils, we plan our curriculum to encourage next phases of learning to support progress. We work hard to identify and remove barriers to learning by using our expertise, sensitivity, perception and adaptability to respond to the pupil’s changing social and emotional needs. We provide opportunities to experience challenge and success and know when to ease off when frustration / lack of resilience begins to show.

We know that our pupils respond to innovative and flexible approaches to learning and therefore use these to motivate and promote curiosity and intrigue. We believe that pupils learn in different ways, so we modify our teaching styles and resources to match pupil’s learning styles. We allow pupils to make mistakes without undue criticism and we give them time to be successful.

We value all attempts and contributions. We actively promote that the pupils have ownership in their own learning and if they are self motivated in a particular area, this is encouraged and supported.
We encourage our pupils to persevere and thus develop resilience